UCLA's Shabazz Muhammad wears Gucci backpack worth close to $1K

Jan. 25, 2013
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UCLA Bruins forward Shabazz Muhammad (15) smiles as he looks at the scoreboard during the second half against the Arizona Widlcats. The Bruins beat the Wildcats 84-73 on Thursday. / Casey Sapio, USA TODAY Sports

by Scott M Gleeson, USA TODAY Sports

by Scott M Gleeson, USA TODAY Sports

After UCLA's huge upset against No. 6 Arizona on Thursday, suddenly the once cloudy Bruins' picture looked much brighter.

With the team's 6-1 start in Pac-12 play, the NCAA tournament isn't in question, coach Ben Howland is no longer on the hot seat, and a head-scratching loss to Cal Poly earlier in the season is in the rear-view mirror.

Most of all, Shabazz Muhammad's NCAA investigation that caused him to miss the first three games of the season seemed to be all but forgotten thanks to his 18.2 points per game and hot shooting in pivotal victories, most notably his 27 points vs. Missouri.

However, the issue with being investigated by the NCAA for impermissible benefits is that it leaves a stain on that player's success as well as the team's success. Just as John Calipari's vacated Final Fours are scrutinized, any success UCLA and Muhammad have this season will be under a ginormous microscope.

So with a big microscope in mind, it's tough to ignore the beginning of Yahoo! Sports columnist Pat Forde's recent piece on UCLA when he revealed that Muhammad was wearing a black Gucci backpack.

Forde wrote:

It was a nice look. Nice enough that I checked Gucci.com Thursday night and found 18 backpacks, with the cheapest going for $990 retail. But, hey, I'm sure these things can be found on sale, right?

I'm not saying there's something fishy about Muhammad's designer backpack, even though most of his teammates were sporting more modest, UCLA-issue models. (Fellow freshman Kyle Anderson also had a designer model.) Maybe it was a knockoff. I'm just saying a college kid wearing Gucci catches the eye â?? especially when the college kid is Muhammad.

Now, a backpack is a backpack, whether it's Kevin Durant's cool backpacks at the end of Thunder games or a college athlete wearing one that seems out of his budget. There's no reason to jump to conclusions because if we surveyed every college basketball player in the country, I'm sure we'd find lots of expensive backpacks and other accessories.

But the point isn't that a college basketball player was wearing a Gucci backpack. The point is that the backpack was worn by the same player who received a three-game suspension and had to pay the NCAA $1,600 in benefits received.